Mike's Minute: Greg Foran is back where he belongs

Greg Foran is back where I suspect he belongs, and likes.

The former Air New Zealand boss, if you have missed it, is off to Kroger, which is America's second biggest grocer behind Walmart.

I have never met a New Zealander who has worked in America that belongs in America more. It was evident from the first time I met him that he was American.

You can spot them in their shirts and ties. They are conservative and yet impeccably pressed. He looked like he had starched himself getting out of bed each morning.

The last time he was in here, his farewell interview, we talked off air about where now. He didn’t say specifically, but I knew it was America.

The bit he never explained, probably because he either couldn’t for commercial reasons, or couldn’t because he hadn't quite worked it out for himself, was what the hell he was ever doing back in New Zealand.

I asked him any number of times in a sort of non-direct way, what on earth was it about a small airline at the bottom of the world that would drag you out of Walmart to come and run it?

Possibly given he wasn’t running Walmart, it was a job in which he was running something so his CV would show a Kroger in years to come that he was ready to be boss.

At Walmart he lived in Arkansas and flew in private jets.

In New Zealand he kept having to explain why the Wellington to Taupo plane never took off.

The Covid thing must have been the nightmare from hell and it wasn’t his fault.

But even without it and the myriad of problems he faced, including the inexplicable cluster around engines that no airline anywhere seems to have encountered the way Air New Zealand has, you always got the impression he was either here for a short time, or it had all been a patriotic mistake driven by a laudable desire to return to home base and make some sort of contribution.

But I can tell you this, of all the Air New Zealand CEO's I have known - business legend Ralph Norris, marketing genius Rob Fyfe, Prime Minister Chris Luxon and Greg Foran - no one looked less at home and more bewildered than Greg.

Some people loved him because he was often at the airport checking their backs in, so work ethic was never the issue.

The issue was Air New Zealand wasn’t American. I bet you he has never been happier, or more relieved.

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